stogdill microstation v8 xm plotting update

MicroStation V8 XM Plotting Update


MicroStation V8 XM Edition Select Update 2 (08.09.04.51) Presenter: Tom Stogdill – Bentley Systems, Inc. Bentley Systems, Incorporated 685 Stockton Drive Exton, PA 19341 www.bentley.com

MID CONTINENT MICROSTATION COMMUNITY SUMMER CONFERENCE AUGUST 15-16, 2007 OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS

IT’S TIME FOR LEARNING


Introduction MicroStation V8 XM Edition and MicroStation PDF Composer have new printing and PDF creation features that will increase your productivity. With the V8 XM Edition, there were many changes to MicroStation's print engine to ensure compatibility with this edition's reworked graphics display subsystem. This work benefits MicroStation printing, Batch Print, PDF Composer, as well as the ProjectWise Plotting product since they use MicroStation as their print engine. This session will guide you through some of the new features of MicroStation V8 XM Printing and MicroStation PDF Composer V8 XM. You will learn more about:

• MicroStation Print dialog enhancements

• Changes to print drivers

• Print driver configuration editor

• MicroStation PDF Printing updates

• Pen table updates

• Batch Print updates

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With the introduction of MicroStation V8 XM Edition many additions have been added to the printing environment. The basic routine of generating a print/plot however, has not changed.

The basic steps to produce the print are something as follows: • Define the area to be printed with either a fence of a view

window. • Select a print driver • Define the paper size and orientation • Select a plot scale.

Optional steps may include:

• Setting color depth (monochrome, grayscale, true color) • Adjusting print attributes • Resymbolization (pen table)

MicroStation V8 XM Edition Print dialog

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The print dialog has been redesigned adding new functionality. Some of these changes include:

• The “Rasterized” setting is no longer read-only and may be used as desired. This setting is available for any print/plot driver that supports Rasterized printing. The Rasterized mode is the most capable for visualization purposes (rendered output).

This setting is required for producing output displaying transparent elements.

• Use Full paper size toggle

• Mirror setting

• Print destination selection

• Send to printer • Create plot file • Create metafile

A new Print Preferences dialog has been added. This allows easy access to many settings that were only available via configuration variables. These setting are stored in the user preference file. A thumbnail preview timeout controls the duration of time allowed for generating a print preview. This can be useful when working with drawings that have raster data attached.

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Non-orthogonal plotting and mirroring may be used if they have been enabled in the Print Preferences The Print Attributes have also been updated to include settings such as transparency.

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A new Print in Progress dialog shows the status of a print submittal providing a button to cancel the print job. MicroStation's print engine required many changes for the V8 XM Edition to ensure compatibility with this edition's reworked graphics display subsystem. Due to constraints imposed by the improved display subsystem, and other factors, the V8 XM Edition supports fewer printer drivers than previous editions.

“Unsupported” drivers will not function and therefore are not included in the product installation. In addition, some delivered PLT files have been consolidated.

A complete listing of these changes may be found under the Printing Enhancements section in help.

There are two sets of drivers provided for the supported print devices (in .plt and .pltcfg files). MicroStation V8 XM Edition added, with the SELECT Update #1 release, a graphical interface for printer drivers called the Printer Driver Configuration Editor. This interface is easier to use and less error prone than editing plot files in a text editor such as notepad. Most values can be picked from lists and properties can be turned on or off with check boxes. The “legacy” text based drivers are still supported but users are encouraged to move toward the new printer driver configuration files (*.pltcfg).

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Printer driver configuration files written from the Printer Driver Configuration Editor are .pltcfg files which are in a XML markup format. Both .plt and .pltcfg files can be opened by the editor, but only .pltcfg files will be written. The Printer Driver Configuration editor may be opened from the Print dialog box by choosing File > Edit Printer Driver. The version of the editor (Notepad vs. the new Printer Driver Configuration editor) based upon the type of driver file that is loaded. Either format of printer driver may be opened in the new editor. When saved, the output will be saved to an XML based (.PLTCFG) driver.

When you modify a sample printer driver configuration file, it is a good idea to retain the original file in its default location, and to save the modified file with a different name, in a separate directory. MicroStation provides you with a separate directory for this purpose — "…Workspace\Standards\Plotdrv". In addition to customized printer driver configuration files, you can use this directory to store copies of all printer driver configuration files that you commonly use. This helps to ensure that your modified files are not overwritten during a subsequent software update, or reinstallation.

Two new specialized drivers have been added for producing output in either a TIF or CALS format.

TIF Driver • New MDL engine • Mono & true color output

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• Support for control of compression type, photometric flag, embedded document name, page name, and artist name.

CALS Driver

• Mono image format The MicroStation V8 V8 XM Edition system printer driver (ie. printer.plt) supports SIZE records in the PLT file. When printing to drivers that support application-defined paper sizes, you can set up the PLT SIZE records without regard to the paper sizes published by the drivers (although you are still restricted to the driver's non-printable margins — you cannot override these). In most cases, since many drivers do not support such ad-hoc definitions, the PLT SIZE records serve to filter and rename the Windows paper sizes. It is also possible to control line weight and line style scaling on an individual paper size basis by specifying one of the following qualifiers for the SIZE record:

• /weightScale=<scale> — scales the widths defined in the

WEIGHT_STROKES record. • /styleScale=<scale> — scales the pattern lengths defined in the

STYLE record. • /penScale=<scale> — sets both line weightScale and line styleScale.

Each qualifier takes a value greater than zero, with 1.0 indicating no scaling.

An example of where this feature may be useful is where WEIGHT_STROKES is set correctly for an ANSI C paper size. When creating an ANSI A half-size plot, the output widths would be too wide. Rather than create a new, half-size, PLT file, you could add /weightScale=0.5 to your ANSI A paper size definition.

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Several updates have been made to PDF output when using the Bentley supplied PDF plot drivers. These updates allow you to create more intelligent PDF’s via MicroStation’s print system. Updates include:

• The default PDF version record is Acrobat 6 • Optional content level labels • Owner password – PDF file permissions

- Print permissions - Change permissions

• Open password • Plot to 3D • Plot extents of PDF page size instead of paper size • Embed document title in PDF file • Embed Author in PDF file • Automatic open plotfile after creation

New settings in 3D Plotting Options

• Hide 3D toolbar • Place Walk

Settings > 3D Plotting

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Pen table enhancements The MicroStation V8 XM Edition has several enhancements to pen table-related functionality.

• Pen table transparency is supported for any printer driver capable of printing in rasterized mode. If pen table transparency is used when printing in non-rasterized mode, the transparency values do not have any effect.

• Pen table priority does not have any effect for printing 3D files. Priority is

implemented for printing 3D files through Z depth, using hardware acceleration when possible, so the pen table is no longer required to make multiple passes through the element list.

• New Pen Table Options dialog includes support for applying multiple

element sections.

• Support for regular expressions in level selection criteria. On the Element Selection Criteria tab in the Modify Pen Table dialog box, you can use regular expressions to select levels. For example, if you key in a.* in the Level regular expression field, the pen table section will match every level beginning with a. The comparisons are not case-sensitive. If a pen table contains a list of levels and a regular expression, all must match the element level name for the pen table section's output actions to be applied.

• Transparency setting in Element Output Actions tab.

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Updates to Batch Printing The Batch Print utility has been enhanced for the V8 XM Edition.

• The format of Batch Print specification (.SPC) files is changed for the V8 XM Edition. Specification files written by previous editions of MicroStation remain valid, but once a specification file is written by the V8 XM Edition, it will not be usable with previous editions.

• Batch Print permits the use of PLT-defined paper sizes in the system

printer specification.

• There is a new Batch Print Preferences dialog that contains Job Set Creations options as well as a control to open files in a read-only mode.

• Additional Batch Print filename formats are supported. The following commonly used batch print filename formats are added to the list of available formats in the Print Filename Format dialog box:

• <DGN>-<print counter>.<extension> • <DGN>-<model>-<print counter>.<extension> • <job>-<DGN>-<model>-<print counter>.<extension>

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Plotting Design History MicroStation V8 XM Edition also provides the ability to plot revisions in Design History. When multiple revisions are selected in the Design History dialog, these revisions may then be printed using the color coding for added, modified, or deleted elements. The color coding, as shown within a View window, will be picked up automatically when a print is produced.

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stogdill microstation v8 xm plotting update

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